Mark Gollihur

digital din³ recording
my home studio for your perusal
updated: 6/5/06

NOTE: Due to my (ever-)changing living arrangement, Digital Din Studio is currently holed up in the back room of the home I temporarily share with my fiancee; while much of the equipment is set up and operational, the drum set is packed away and my recording ability is limited (for "neighbor-proximity" reasons). So I'm currently working on mixing and mastering projects, and we'll be looking to buy a new home soon (and the one described below is currently on the market). I figure I'd leave the details up though, since I still have the gear - and once in the new place I'll update with even newer photos.

full studio shot
"digital din" is the name I've given to my ragged collection of strange and unusual gear, which I use to create a ragged collection of strange and unusual music. This is where I make the music happen with Din Within, as well as with all of my other musical projects. I call it digital din³, because it's now in its third (and best) incarnation, having previously been in my other homes. In August 2006 I moved to a new home - a home I chose partially because it had a very good layout to house what you see here. And now I've finally found the time to put up new photos and descriptions.

I originally bought my desk about 12 years ago; the thing that I liked about it was that it had two work surfaces as well as pull-out mouse and keyboard shelves. At one point, I had the studio monitors on the upper deck along with my huge Trinitron 21", but since have bought an really nice pair of matching studio monitor stands, and gone to a dual 19" LCD flatscreen video monitor setup. I've also recently picked up a pair of small M-Audio Nearfields and set up a "boom box" listening set up for mixing/mastering purposes. Having dual screens really makes things a lot easier - and I also recently got a nice clamp stand which holds both monitors up in the air. Behind the desk hanging on the wall is some dampening material; acoustic blankets to be exact. They help tame the room without making it totally dead. On the left of the chair is my keyboard setup, and on the right is the mixer and most of my effects modules, compressors, etc. Mounted into the desk (but hidden behind the chair) is my Tascam Cassette recorder and Fostex DA-38.

Here are my main equipment racks; my old-school "pre-Mackie-lawsuit" Behringer MX2642 actually sounds great and has held up pretty well over the years. As a four-buss board, it gives me reasonable mixing flexibility for my computer recording setup. When necessary, I can record up to 10 simultaneous channels with the M-Audio Delta 1010; for instance, when I record drums I use the busses on the board for the first four channels, and use custom cables I made up to run four other channels direct but still use the mixer's preamps. For the overheads, I use my Roland digital pre and drop them in using the digital inputs. I also have a pair of patch bays, assorted preamps, and several other toys in the rack.

Opposite my equipment racks is my keyboard arsenal. The QS8.2 was a great purchase, and along with a couple of expansion cards it offered a substantial improvement in my studio's capabilities. I really like the piano-weighted action on this board, and there are hundreds of sounds to choose from. I recently bought the MS2000B from Korg, which has some killer analog-esque sounds with a thoroughly modern front end. I also have several modules to augment my MIDI soundscapes, including an Alesis SR16 drum machine and a Roland JV-1010 with an orchestral expansion card. All this connects through the M-Audio MidiSport 8x8. Of course, I have lots of softsynths too.

In the corner are my main guitar racks; three Fender six strings (a Strat, a Tele and a Toronado, all customized) give me access to the most popular guitar sounds. A steel string and a nylon string acoustic guitar round out the guitars in my collection. Bass-wise, I have a '76 "Rickenfaker" (actually an Ibanez copy of a 4001) and a 5-string Ibanez. Hanging off the end of the rack, I also have a DeArmond Ashbory bass, and when I need them, I always have my gigging instruments - my trusty PBC/Bunker 6-string fretted bass (my battle-axe), my custom-built fretless six string bass, and a 12-string Galveston bass. Also currently being worked on/modified are a 5-string Stingray copy and an 8-string touchstyle instrument.

New to my studio is a dedicated "tracking" room. With a heavy wall between the tracking and recording rooms, I can finally record with the monitors hot - rather than using headphones! And since I have the Tranzport remote control unit, I can go into the other room and still control the machine if I need to record alone. I have several dividers and acoustic blankets/foam acoustic deflectors available in this room to configure it in a variety of ways, whether I want to record guitars, vocals, drums, or whatever.

Speaking of drums, here's my 7-piece kit, set up in the tracking room. It's a pretty decent sounding kit, and I've got plenty of cymbals and a double bass pedal, so I've got most styles covered. I'm not much of a drummer myself, but it's definitely nice to have a kit set up to flesh out ideas or throw down a demo track.
Finally, among my other amps and preamps, I always have my trusty live bass rig. With the setup I have, I can get pretty much any bass tone, and I've got some effects and even MIDI-bass to play with. This baby shakes the walls!

Equipment List